The Psychological Effects of the Recession

Economic PTSD

Michael Bader

We feel responsible for things we didn't do and helpless in the face of things we couldn't do.

Having recently lost 40 percent of my own retirement savings, it's not hard to empathize with others in the same boat, including their feelings of helplessness, rage, guilt and shame.

Empathy for oneself and others is necessary but not sufficient. The antidote to helplessness begins with compassion and acceptance, but it doesn't end there. It involves grief but can't rest there. We need psychological healing but not apart from healing the world.

Outrage is part of the healing that we need. But our public outrage at being betrayed by the greed, mismanagement and political shenanigans that created the current crisis is compromised by all the subtle and secret ways that we avoid confronting painful feelings of helplessness and, instead, irrationally hold ourselves accountable.

This creates a political problem: While the helplessness we feel is legitimate, our ability to rationally respond to it by trying to correct its real structural causes is compromised by the guilt and shame that we've internalized.

Our real responsibility to change the world -- something we can do -- is undermined by the false and self-blaming feelings of responsibility for things that we didn't and can't do. The paradox is that we have to face the ways that we're really helpless in order to own the ways that we're not.

What is the alternative? The alternative to irrational guilt is real innocence. The alternative to denial is grief. And the solution to helplessness is to get angry and fight back.

The problem for progressives is psychological as well as practical. Like everyone else, we struggle with passivity, cynicism and confusion about how to effect change in the current climate.

Some of us are waiting on the sidelines to see what Obama will do, criticizing or celebrating his choice of advisers. Others are actively organizing and participating in various efforts to influence political outcomes. But most of us, I believe, are facing the difficulty of maintaining and building on the hope and passion generated over the last year in the presidential campaign.

In my view, our capacity and energy for political engagement is sapped by hidden psychological reactions to the current economic catastrophe, reactions complicated by feelings of guilt, responsibility and helplessness.

We feel responsible for things we didn't do and helpless in the face of things we could do. We feel guilty when we should feel innocent, cynical when we should feel hopeful and powerless when we should feel powerful. Understanding and resolving this confusion should help progressives enormously.

Everyone processes economic stress and anxiety differently. For every rational response to this recession, there is an irrational one -- one that derives less from objective circumstances and more from the peculiarities of the human psyche. Such peculiarities are no less unreasonable because they are common. Irrational feelings of envy, self-blame and denial rear their ugly heads in many of us, often with painful results. I see them in myself. I see them in friends. And I see them in my clients.

Self-blame is one of the most insidious and common of these reactions. It's not that we blame ourselves for failing to anticipate the exact moment when the stock market began to collapse, although some do. Most of us are too rational to openly fault ourselves for not being that omniscient.

Instead, the self-blaming is subtler and starts a little later in the time-line, e.g., I should have moved everything to cash when it first happened, or I was in denial and now I'm paying for it, or So-and-So predicted that the bottom was falling out, and I just didn't listen.

Sometimes, such guilt is spiced up with a dash of envy: My neighbor just sold his house and was sitting on the profits waiting to buy another one -- the lucky bastard. Or, my brother-in-law saw this coming and moved to the sidelines a year ago, or even, from one patient, my best friend consulted a psychic last spring who convinced her to get completely out of the stock market!

Such stories, real and apocryphal, invariably provoke twinges of envy and self-criticism. Their good fortune highlights our failure. Often, such self-castigation continues right up to the present: I should probably get out now, but am afraid I'll miss the recovery. The implied judgment here is "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Whatever the facts of the matter (even the savviest of investors are not sure what to do at the moment), the underlying sentiment involves blaming oneself for some mistake, failure of nerve, intelligence or judgment.

In fact, while individuals here and there may have outguessed the markets, most of us didn't. And when "most of us" find ourselves in a similar predicament, that predicament can't possibly be an individual problem or be reasonably solved by individuals making smarter or more rational decisions.

When the dot-com bubble burst in the spring of 2000, many of my patients blamed themselves for being too greedy, or for going against their common sense by listening too much to their brokers, or for going along with the herd even though they knew better.

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AlterNet.Org

Ending Poverty: Moving Beyond

More Aid And Fair Trade
By Davinder Kaur
18 November, 2008 STWR
CounterCurrents.Org

As the United Nations seeks increased financial assistance from donor countries to help meet the flagging Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the inadequacy of international aid and fairer trade agreements has never been so clear. In 2007 alone, aid to developing countries fell by 8.4%, leaving huge challenges ahead to meet the Gleneagles G-8 target of doubling aid to Africa by 2010. In July, the Doha round of trade talks collapsed again for the third time as developing countries refused to bow down to US pressure allowing increased access to their markets. These factors, alongside the rise in hunger as a result of the food crisis and the worsening global financial crisis, underline the low global priority given by rich nations to the world’s poor.

Pledges and promises of aid to eradicate poverty made by rich nations over the past four decades have resulted in few changes for the Global South. If genuinely concerned with poverty reduction, all OECD member states would have long ago reached the 0.7% target for aid, pledged via the United Nations in 1970. Thirty-eight years later, not a single G8 country has met this target. Any reasons or excuses are rendered largely irrelevant when considering that it took a matter of days for Western governments to find an estimated three trillion dollars to bailout banks caught in the financial crisis. The Jubilee Debt Campaign estimates that less than a quarter of this amount is needed to wipe the debts of the poorest 100 countries - simply to allow them to meet their people’s most basic needs.

At a time when the rise in food prices has caused an additional 105 million people to join the ranks of the hungry, the impact of the economic crisis is likely to see the needs of the developing countries further sidelined as Western governments rush to divert money to contain the problem.

Systemic Failures

As these crises worsen, the global trading system continues to do more harm than good. Import surges of heavily subsidised goods flood the markets of poor countries, wreaking havoc on domestic producers and driving many out of business and into poverty. Additionally, rich nations consistently force developing countries to lower their tariffs while refusing to do so themselves, thereby denying poor farmers the right to protect their livelihoods. The situation is further exacerbated when considering that two-thirds of developing countries are now net food importers. The WTO and the international trading system that it promotes has served to strengthen the status quo, keeping those at the top of the ladder in place while kicking away the ladder from those at the bottom.

Even if the targets for aid and trade were met in the near future, the underlying problems of how trade and aid are administered would continue. Aid would still leave developing countries in a state of dependence upon rich nations and continue to come with conditions attached forcing them to open up their markets to foreign goods and services. Furthermore, aid used by poor countries to pay their external debts would detract them from providing the most basic needs for their citizens. On a broader level, the unaccountable and undemocratic ways in which the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO function would not be addressed, much less resolved, while the enormous influence of corporate lobbying groups would persist.

Calling for better trade rules and more aid to reduce poverty and growing inequality is not enough to achieve real change. The neoliberal ideologies of economic growth are enshrined in the very institutions that are designed to help developing countries prosper. A belief in the free market, deregulation, privatisation and corporate globalisation is the basis upon which these institutions operate. We have seen in recent weeks how unsustainable the current economic system is and how liable it is of causing a financial tsunami upon the lives of people everywhere.

The biggest financial crisis since the 1930s is not taking place in a vacuum - its roots are based in the neoliberal ideologies stemming from the Washington Consensus dating back to the 1980s. Only a few weeks ago, it seemed we had reached a stage where the conceptual apparatus of neoliberalism had become “so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question.” Since then, the world’s most profitable banks have been part-nationalised, a worldwide recession is looming and a global crisis in confidence in the current economic model has become the norm.

Recent events have demonstrated that to continue working within the confines of the global economic framework may result in slight changes for a small proportion of the world’s poor, but will not be significant enough to achieve targets such as the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015. This goal, which is already insufficient, was made further unattainable since the World Bank revised the international poverty line from $1.08 to $1.25 per day, effectively plunging a further 430 million people into extreme poverty overnight.

Securing Basic Human Needs

The current economic system, based on ever-increasing economic growth as the overarching solution to fighting poverty, is both ineffective and unsustainable. The key to tackling poverty and inequality must come from a change in principles and priorities from which practical steps can be taken to put long-term structures in place. One such solution would be to define and redistribute essential resources in order to immediately secure basic human needs. The universal right to a life of dignity and survival has long been enshrined in article 25 of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services.”

There is no reason why 967 million people should go to bed hungry every day. The problem is not defined by a scarcity of food, but by the insufficient access to resources for millions of the world’s poor who lack the necessary purchasing power to survive. The ‘trickle-down theory’ of economic growth, or the political promise that wealth accumulated by the rich would eventually permeate down through society, has proven to be grossly insufficient in dealing with the urgent demand for basic and essential needs.

To immediately reduce inequality and end extreme poverty, a new international mechanism is required which can facilitate a greater economic sharing of essential resources. The most critical of these are land, basic agricultural produce, water, energy and essential medicines, which together need to be defined, withdrawn and protected from international markets and no longer traded by multinational corporations. A similar initiative was supported by over 100 civil society organisations at the recent WTO talks. Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua presented a proposal to remove healthcare, education, water, telecommunications and energy from the WTO “on the basis that these essential public services are human rights which governments have an obligation to provide, and should not be treated as tradable commodities.”

Although the UN is in need of considerable reform, it should play a lead role in redistributing essential resources. It is the only international body with the experience, expertise and financial resources to initiate and coordinate such a crucial program. A new body within the UN needs to be responsible for a short-term emergency relief program to address the urgent needs of the 50,000 people who die each day from poverty, of which 30,000 are children. Simultaneously, a long-term program could begin to coordinate securing the wider basic needs of the global public.

A genuine change in principles and a renewed sense of commitment is urgently needed to tackle extreme poverty and inequality. A global undertaking of this scale would not come without further challenges and complexities, but it would lead to rapid and progressive change as low-income countries lift themselves out of poverty without permanently relying on financial hand-outs. Campaigning for the redistribution of essential resources, rather than just more aid or fairer trade, is the first vital step to securing the basic needs of the world community.

Davinder Kaur is the Communications Officer for Share The World’s Resources, an NGO advocating for essential resources such as food, water and energy to be shared internationally. She can be reached at davinder@stwr.org

Public Lecture: The Global Financial Crisis

with Michel Chossudovsky

Montreal, November 27

Le Mouvement montréalais pour la vérité sur le 11 septembre en association avec le Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation présente:

GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

The Great Depression of the 21st Century

What are the policy alternatives?

Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse?

The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy

Disposable People

New Slavery in the Global Economy

By Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves, Washington, DC, (www.freetheslaves.net) and Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey Roehampton, England. He is the world's leading expert on contemporary slavery.

All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund antislavery projects around the world.

In 2002, The Carpet Slaves: Stolen Children of India, an HBO documentary based on Disposable People, won a Peabody and two Emmy Awards, one for Outstanding Investigative Journalism–Long Form and another for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research.

Description
Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy. This completely revised edition includes a new preface.

Explore full text using Google Book

Roehampton University: Kevin Bales

Free the Slaves - Home

Slavery: A Global Investigation

East Bound And Down:

A Homeless March On Washington Part 2
By David Kendall

Countercurrents.org
11 November, 2008

Read Part I

The first installment of this series might have appeared to dismiss David Swanson's suggested march on Washington with regard to a "stolen election". [1] Far from it, Swanson's call for justice seemed well founded, and he is probably best qualified to organize and lead that movement or any other. But in view of the recent victory for Barack Obama, this article series seeks to extend the purpose and application of Swanson's original proposal beyond the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election. [2]

First, most Americans cannot leave their jobs, homes and families indefinitely as Swanson suggests, whereas growing numbers of American homeless already have. As outlined in the first installment of this series, "American Homeless Ambassadors" are an army of disenfranchised citizens ready and waiting to be mobilized through regional and community coordination for a "Homeless March on Washington".

Second, much bigger problems still remain for all Americans to protest in Washington. As Susan Rosenthal suggests, "No matter who is elected, the war will continue to take American and Iraqi lives. The economy will be continue to be floated at the expense of working people. The environment will continue to be destroyed for profit. And more Americans will lose access to health care." [3] Owned by corporate America, both Obama and McCain are on the same team, and it doesn't happen to be ours. Both presidential candidates supported the recent "Wall Street Bailout", and neither have proposed any sort of emergency plan to bailout "Main Street".

Meanwhile, Richard C. Cook, former policy analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, has proposed a feasible plan designed to extend beyond the immediate crisis. To stabilize the U.S. economy, the "Cook Plan" simply injects it with purchasing power at a monthly rate of $1,000 per adult and $500 per child -- regardless of employment status. [4]

Essentially, that's all there is to it -- a simple plan that is easy for everyone to understand, but not so easy for politicians to manipulate and distort for their own interests. Cook estimates the annual gap between production and purchasing power in the United States is about $3.77-trillion. The current U.S. population is just under 306-million. If monthly vouchers were distributed according to the "Cook Plan", the government would still have several hundred billion dollars left over at the end of each year. Sweet deal. So why hasn't the government implemented it yet? This is an excellent question that will be discussed in the next installment of this series.

Meanwhile, the "Cook Plan" is something all other Americans can literally get their teeth into. It's a positive proposal we can all get behind and promote in a "Homeless March on Washington", rather than merely protesting a "stolen election" or any number of other social injustices.

Right now, most Americans probably aren't too excited about a "Homeless March on Washington". It seems like a painful and expensive job -- probably even "silly" and "extreme" -- and nobody really wants to do it. Likewise, our leaders in Washington don't seem too excited about a "Basic Income Guarantee" or any other means of pulling us out of this noose that they've cinched around our necks.

Meanwhile, the economic and ecological crises continue to escalate, and they're not going to magically disappear this time. So while a "Homeless March on Washington" might seem like a dirty job, somebody will eventually need to do it. Moreover, the effort will be far more successful with regional and community support than without it. Ann Friedman provides some interesting commentary in this regard:

"Today's social-justice activists start with very different conditions than those that existed in the 1960s. Yes, the student protests against the Vietnam War shook the country to its core. But it's not hard to connect the dots between the absence of a draft for the Iraq War and the lack of ongoing protest today." [5]

Michael Moore follows with an entertaining thought: "America needs to bring back the draft, but only draft the children of the rich". [6] But how many millions of American homeless have already been "drafted" and "shafted" in a very real sense -- by their own government? How many more of us need to be drafted before communities start coordinating a response to this madness? As the current economic crisis continues to escalate, perhaps increased numbers of Americans will become ready to mobilize a "Homeless March on Washington" for "Basic Income Guarantee".

In his many articles, Richard C. Cook very effectively fields all sorts of technical arguments regarding his proposal. [7] But some important general observations can be made here:

1) At least one real world American example of Basic Income Guarantee already exists. Established in 1976, the "Alaska Permanent Fund" provides every citizen in the State of Alaska with an annual dividend of approximately $1,200 from productive surplus. So not only is guaranteed income entirely doable, it's already being done -- in the United States. [8]

2) If the U.S. government can bail out wealthy bankers on Wall Street, then it can also bail out workers on Main Street. To coin an old cliché', "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." Any questions about inflation, welfare, funding, or feasibility should be applied at least as critically to the Wall Street Bailout and the war in Iraq as they are to a Basic Income Guarantee for every American citizen.

3) If our government can afford to maintain endless wars against unnamed terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, then it can afford to satisfy the fundamental needs of every American citizen right here at home. In 1966, John Kenneth Galbraith suggested that a guaranteed income wouldn't cost "much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by 'experts' in Vietnam". [9] [10]

4) "The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however minuscule, through welfare benefits." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considered it a symptom of "confused social values that these two groups turn out to be the richest and the poorest". But these two extremes in American society have already enjoyed a "guaranteed income" for at least the past eighty years. [11]

5) According to Dr. King, "The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity." [12] And Richard C. Cook concurs: "Our problems stem not from a failure to manage fairly the limited resources found in a world of scarcity but from our inability to manage a world of almost unlimited abundance and prosperity."[13]

"Phase 1" of Dr. King's dream was to abolish Black segregation in the United States, and great strides resulted from his leadership in this regard. But "Phase 2" of Dr. King's dream was to eradicate poverty for people of all races worldwide. While he recognized that "people must be made consumers" through either employment or incomes or both, the centerpiece for King's proposal was "Basic Income Guarantee". [14]

But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was by no means the first or last to propose guaranteed purchasing power as a means toward economic stability. It was proposed in 1795 by American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, [15] and again in 1849 by American businessman Edward Kellogg . [16] In 1918 Scottish engineer, C.H. Douglas, proposed a "national dividend" based on a system he called "Social Credit". [17]

But according to Richard C. Cook, "...while the financiers were well aware of Douglas 's system, they hated it. Word went out in the 1920s that his name was never to be mentioned in the British press. John Maynard Keyes was said to have developed his own deficit-spending theories as a means to counter Douglas 's influence. And when Douglas visited the U.S. in the late 1930s, he was told to his face that he would never be allowed to introduce his ideas in this country." [18]

More recently, Nobel Prize winning Economist, Milton Friedman proposed a negative income tax to support a Basic Income Guarantee. But he originally intended this program to replace all other welfare and assistance programs. So when the bill was revised to merely supplement the existing system rather than replace it, Friedman ended up opposing the distorted version of his original proposal, and it was never implemented. [19]

Now Peter Barnes, founder of Working Assets and author of "Capitalism 3.0", steps forward to join Richard C. Cook and many other economists to propose a "national dividend" or "basic income guarantee" to save the U.S. economy. While Barnes suggests funding should come from the formation of a "Commons Sector" to regulate the environmental damage caused by industry, his conclusions concur with many others regarding a guaranteed income -- in other words a "birthright" or "heritage" for every American citizen; a permanent "leisure dividend" instead of temporary "unemployment compensation" or "welfare"; a daily opportunity for self-improvement and personal growth; and purchasing power for social security and economic stability, overall. [20]

So, with such a long history and so much contemporary support, why does such a simple idea receive so much opposition from those in power? Why are the power structures on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. so reluctant -- nay afraid -- to even discuss such an obviously viable plan for economic stability? Why must "We The People " march on Washington to gets this proposal discussed? If we're "all in this together" as Barack Obama suggests, then why must we force a reasonable decision upon him?

In the next and final version of this series, these questions will be discussed along with a few others. Meanwhile, the economic forecast is not at all promising, regardless of recent election results. Things will most likely get much worse before they start getting any better. Moreover, windy campaign rhetoric rarely translates very well into real-world practice.So it might be wise for communities nationwide to begin right now in organizing a Homeless March on Washington -- "East Bound and Down" -- to bring our leaders back to their senses.

"East bound and down, loaded up and truckin', We're gonna do what they say can't be done. We got a long way to go, and a short time to get there. Well, I'm eastbound, jus' watch ol' Bandit run!!" [21]

David Kendall lives in WA and is concerned about the future of our world.

Sixty Days and Counting

Written by Kim Stanley Robinson

ABOUT THIS BOOK
By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next.

But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn’t intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR–and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it.

For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president can control–a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him.

In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last–and most terrible–of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock . . . the kind of miracle that only dedicated men and women can bring about.

An Open Letter To The Candidates

On Single Payer Health Reform

America's health care system is failing. It denies care to many in need and is expensive, error-prone, and increasingly bureaucratic. The misfortune of illness is often amplified by financial ruin. Despite abundant medical resources, care is often inadequate because of the irrationality of our insurance system. Yet our political leaders seem intent on reprising failed schemes from the past, rejecting the single payer national health insurance model that is the sole hope for affordable, comprehensive coverage.

Leading Republicans propose tax incentives to encourage the uninsured to buy coverage, but these subsidies fall far short of the cost of adequate insurance. For cost control, they suggest high co-payments and deductibles. Yet these selectively burden the sick and poor, discourage preventive and primary care, and have little effect on costs, since seriously ill patients - who account for most health spending - quickly exceed their deductibles and are in no position to forego expensive care.

Most leading Democrats offer a mandate model for reform. Under this model, the government would require people (or their employers) to buy private coverage, while offering an expanded Medicaid-like program for the poor and near-poor.

Variants of the mandate model, first proposed by Richard Nixon, were passed with great fanfare in Massachusetts (1988), Oregon (1989) and Washington State (1993). All died quiet deaths. As costs soared, legislators backed off from enforcing the mandates or funding new coverage for the poor. Massachusetts' recent reform, which largely excuses employers from the mandate but imposes steep fines on the uninsured, appears poised to follow a similar path. Of the middle-income uninsured who are required to pay the full premium for coverage, few have signed up. Meanwhile, the state has already announced a $147 million shortfall in funding for subsidies for the poor.

Mandates and tax incentives can add coverage only by increasing costs. They augment the role (and profits) of private insurers, whose overhead is four times Medicare's, and whose efforts to avoid payment impose a costly paperwork burden on doctors and hospitals. The cost cutting measures often appended to such reforms - computerization, care management and medical prevention - have repeatedly failed to yield savings.

In contrast, single payer reform could realize administrative savings of more than $300 billion annually - enough to cover the uninsured, and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. It would also slow cost increases by fostering coordination and planning.

Political calculus favors mandates or tax incentives, which accommodate insurers, drug firms and other medical entrepreneurs. But such reforms are economically wasteful and medically dangerous. The incremental changes suggested by most Democrats cannot solve our problems; further pursuit of market-based strategies, as advocated by Republicans, will exacerbate them. What needs to be changed is the system itself.

We urge our political leaders to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a non-profit, single payer national health insurance system.
Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)
PNHP RESOURCES
CommonDreamsOrg.

Obama Administration, New Congress Should Mean

Aggressive Approach to Global Warming, Science Group Says

WASHINGTON (November 5, 2008)

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is looking forward to quick and decisive action to combat climate change by the new Obama administration and Congress after eight long years of obstruction by the outgoing administration.

"President-elect Obama has argued that our economic, energy and environmental problems share the same solution," said UCS President Kevin Knobloch. "We are looking to the new president and Congress to work together to build a clean energy economy that will create millions of new jobs here at home, expand capital investment, make our nation less dependent on oil, and prevent the worst consequences of global warming.

"The past eight years of denial and delay are over. Voters largely embraced candidates who support clean energy, green jobs, and a safer climate for our children and grandchildren."

Next year the new administration and Congress can do much to jumpstart a "Green Deal" that would help pull the country out of our economic downturn by investing in clean energy and modernizing the national electricity grid, Knobloch said.

"A critical step for Congress is to pass a strong federal climate bill with a declining cap on global warming emissions," Knobloch said. "Such a cap-and-trade system would generate needed revenues to finance new energy sources and help Americans manage and reduce their energy costs."

Federal lawmakers would be following the example set just last month by six of the 10 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative states in the Northeast. They raised nearly $39 million in the first U.S. auction of permits to emit carbon dioxide under a regional cap-and-trade regime. If the price of the first auction holds, the auctions would yield more than $500 million each year for investment in energy efficiency initiatives and renewable energy development. That number is modest in comparison to the tens of billions of dollars that a national economywide cap-and-trade program could raise.

President-elect Obama's Web site states that his cap-and-trade policy would require all permits to be auctioned, and the proceeds to go to "investments in a clean energy future, habitat protections, and rebates and other transition relief for families." The new president has called for global warming emissions to be reduced by 80 percent by 2050, a target that is consistent with what leading climate scientists say will be needed to stabilize our climate.

President-elect Obama also has pledged to ensure that 10 percent of the nation's electricity comes from renewable energy sources by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025. Such a national renewable electricity standard would cut global warming emissions, create jobs, save ratepayers money, and encourage private investment in clean technology.

According to a UCS analysis, if Congress required 20 percent of the nation's electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020, for example, it would generate 185,000 new jobs; spur $66.7 billion in private capital investment; provide $25.6 billion to farmers, ranchers and rural landowners for leasing their land for biomass and wind energy production; and generate $2 billion in new local tax revenues by 2020. It would cut consumer electric and natural gas bills $10.5 billion in 2020, and by $31.8 billion in 2030. And it would cut 223 million metric tons of global warming emissions a year in 2020—the equivalent of taking some 36 million cars off the road.

The Bush administration spent eight years trying to sabotage international progress on climate change. In stark contrast, "President-elect Obama has pledged that United States will lead and inspire other countries to take action," Knobloch said, "and he clearly recognizes that the essential step to restoring our international leadership on global warming is to take bold action here at home." Obama has indicated he will send representatives to the next UN climate meeting, which will take place in Poland next month.

Homepage Union of Concerned Scientists
Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air [PDF]

Thoreau, Walden and the Environment

CommonDreams.Org

Living Planet Report

Details Dangers Of Living Beyond The Environment's Means

New WWF Analysis Warns of "Ecological Credit Crunch" and Offers Solutions For Avoiding A "Natural Resources Meltdown" As U.S. Scores Among Nations With Largest Ecological Footprint

WASHINGTON DC,
October 28, 2008

As global financial markets learn difficult lessons on the consequences of unregulated spending, a new report issued by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns of the danger to future prosperity if the reckless over-consumption of the Earth’s natural capital is left unchecked.

WWF’s Living Planet Report 2008, produced with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network (GFN), shows more than three quarters of the world’s people now living in nations that are ecological debtors, where national consumption has outstripped their country’s biological capacity. Presently, human demands on the world's natural capital measure nearly a third more than earth can sustain. In addition, global natural wealth and diversity continue to decline, and more and more countries are slipping into a state of permanent or seasonal water stress.

The findings of the Living Planet Report 2008 reinforce WWF-US’s “Greenprint” agenda, a policy road map for the next U.S. administration, which was provided in mid-October to Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill) and their U.S. presidential campaign staffs. Commenting on the “Greenprint” at its release, Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-US noted “Global consumption of natural resources far exceeds the Earth’s regenerative capacity. We are borrowing from our natural capital at an entirely unsustainable rate. And, as is evidenced from the current economic crisis, unsustainable borrowing is not without profound consequences. To raise the stakes even further, there can be no bailout if the Earth’s systems collapse.”

“The world is currently struggling with the consequences of over-valuing its financial assets, but a more fundamental crisis looms ahead – an ecological credit crunch caused by under-valuing the environmental assets that are the basis of all life and prosperity,” said WWF International Director-General James Leape, in the foreword to the new report. “Most of us are propping up our current lifestyles, and our economic growth, by drawing - and increasingly overdrawing - on the ecological capital of other parts of the world,” Leape said.

According to the Living Planet Report 2008, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Kuwait have the largest national ecological footprints per person. On the other end of the scale are countries such as Haiti and the Congo, with a low ecological footprint per person, but facing a future of degrading biocapacity from deforestation and increased demands from a rising population and export pressures.

The Living Planet Report, published by WWF every two years since 1998, has become widely accepted as an accurate analysis of the earth's ability to remain a “living planet”. In 2008, it adds for the first time, new measures of global, national and individual water footprints to existing measures of the Ecological Footprint of human demand on natural resources and the Living Planet Index, a measure of the state of nature.

The Living Planet Index, compiled by ZSL, shows a nearly 30 per cent decline since 1970 in nearly 5000 measured populations of 1,686 species. These dramatic losses in our natural wealth are being driven by deforestation and land conversion in the tropics and the impact of dams, diversions and climate change on freshwater species. Pollution, over-fishing and destructive fishing in marine and coastal environments are also taking a considerable toll.

The Living Planet Report 2008 includes a new water footprint measurement which illustrates the significance of water traded in the form of commodities; for example, the production of a cotton T-shirt requires 765 gallons of water. On average, each person consumes 327,177 gallons (about half an Olympic swimming pool) of water a year, but this varies from 654,354 gallons per person a year (USA) to 163,325 gallons per capita annually (Yemen). Approximately 50 countries are currently facing moderate or severe water stress and the number of people suffering from year-round or seasonal water shortages is expected to increase as a result of climate change, the report finds.

For the single most important challenge – climate change – the report shows that a range of efficiency, renewable and low emissions “wedges” could meet projected energy demands to 2050 with reductions in carbon emissions of 60 to 80 percent. Bringing an ecosystems approach into consumption, development and trade considerations would go a long way to protecting the world's vital living resources.

“These Living Planet measures serve as clear and robust signposts to what needs to be done,” said WWF-International’s Leape. “If humanity has the will, it has the way to live within the means of the planet, but we must recognize that the ecological credit crunch will require even bolder action that that now being mustered for the financial crisis.”
World Wildlife Fund

A Terrible and Silent Crisis:

The Destruction of the American Working Class

North American society prides itself on being classless. Almost no one in North America calls him/herself lower-class or upper-class, and people who describe themselves as 'middle-class' (a class which really no longer exists in North America) do so hesitantly. Few even describe themselves as 'working-class', since that seems to imply it's a place one resides for life (which is the case, but to acknowledge this fact would put the lie to the myth of social mobility). Despite the Great American (and Canadian) Dream (anyone can be President or Billionaire if they work long and hard at it), your chances of moving up even one quintile in the economic and social order are negligible, and dependent more on luck than intelligence, endeavour or education.

My friend Joe Bageant's book Deer Hunting With Jesus explains through personal stories his brutal assessment of just how strong the class system in the US really is, why the classes are and always have been at war, and why that plays perfectly into the hands of the right-wing political and economic interests there. These are stories about the people Joe grew up with and calls friends, and to write about their lives so bluntly and candidly is an act of incredible courage and honesty.

This is a society where poverty and illness are stigmatized as symptoms of laziness, ignorance and self-neglect, a society built on two-way class vs class fear of the unknown and misunderstood. The principal determinant of one's class in America, and the hermetic worldview that comes with it, is education.

More than anything, Deer Hunting is a plea to those of progressive inclination to meet with their working-class peers, at a grass-roots level, to understand how they live, how they think, and why they think that way, and to find, as hard as it will be to do so, common cause with them against the corporatist exploiters and their right-wing political and religious handmaidens, and common cause for universal health care, quality education for all, a fair pension and a decent wage for a day's work -- the end of the "dead-end social construction that all but guarantees failure".

I'd given away three copies of Joe's book before I'd ready anything beyond the brilliant introduction -- I just knew the people I gave them to needed to read the book more than I did. If you've read Lakoff, and kind of understand the huge divide between conservative and liberal worldviews, you have to read Bageant, so you really understand the chasm between the worldviews of the uneducated and educated. When you read Joe's astonishing stories, all of a sudden what George Lakoff says makes sense. And, just as astonishingly, so does Bush's 2004 win, and the terrifying prospect that Republican arch-conservatives could be poised to establish a dynasty in the US that will accelerate the Cheney-Bush regime's project for endless war, bankrupting and dismantling government, and ending the separation of church and state, and which will last until that country's final, ghastly unraveling occurs (I'm betting that will happen later this century).

I picked up my fourth copy of Deer Hunting With Jesus in Australia, which includes a little orientation for Australians not familiar with current US culture. This orientation was probably unnecessary for two reasons: Educated Australians (and Canadians and Europeans) probably know as much about current US culture as their American counterparts. And uneducated people from these countries, I strongly suspect, think much like their US counterparts (though less fanatically) -- Joe's description of uneducated Americans sent shudders up my spine, as I recognized in their stories and attitudes those of many uneducated Canadians I thought I knew, or didn't care to know (and now understand much better).

There is so much wisdom in this book, and it is so important to read to achieve an understanding of the current predicament of the US (and hence of the world), that I would not presume to précis it here. If you read only one book this year, please make it Deer Hunting With Jesus.

Some of the key lessons for me:

• "Universal access to a decent education would lift the lives of millions over time...Never experiencing the life of the mind scars entire families for generations". After reading Joe's stories I have new respect for those who have taught themselves what they needed to learn to be informed, independent citizens, and an appreciation for how those without education are oppressed to an almost unimaginable degree.
• At least 60% of Americans are "working class", i.e. they do not have power over their work -- when they work, how much they get paid or whether they'll be "cut loose from their job [or self-employed labour dependent on big corporations] at the first shiver of Wall Street".
• The critical aspects of the "terrible and silent crisis" destroying working-class Americans are: (a) the working class' own passivity, antipathy to intellect, and belligerence towards the outside world, (b) an economic, corporatist system that benefits from keeping them uneducated, fearful and debt-ridden (and hence holders of low-wage, nonunion, disposable, part-time, noninsured jobs), (c) a health-care system that is especially dysfunctional in working-class areas and whose few quality services are unaffordable to the working class, (d) their dreadful, fat-laden diet (which is all that they can afford) and the toll it takes on their health, and (e) religious and political leaders who prey on their ignorance and exploit their fears.
• Almost as bad as the corporatists at exploiting the working class are the rich, uneducated entrepreneurial class who live in their neighbourhoods -- realtors, lawyers, brokers, gas retailers, "downtown pickle vendors" and other "middlemen who stand on the necks of the working poor". This "mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians" who dominate local politics help get tax breaks and regulation exemptions for big corporations, in return for financial favours.
• As I read this book I realized that my book on Natural Enterprise, which was in part designed to help the chronically underemployed to find meaningful work, will be totally inaccessible to the working class -- they don't have the literacy or basis of understanding of how an economy works to even begin to understand its processes and messages. I can appreciate how working-class people, and their friends (like Joe) perceive "entrepreneurs" to be just the low-level agents of the corporatists, not a means for their liberation from wage slavery.
• "Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial free market economy does not make for optimism or open-mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink." Joe tells how scourges like Tyson Foods and Rubbermade belittle, abuse, threaten and browbeat their workers into obedience, and acceptance of their lot in life. As a result, "the intellectual lives of most working-class Americans consist of things that sound as if they might or should be true" (e.g. that we should all "support our troops"), and what is engendered as a result is a "tide of national meanness".
• Rich Republicans still meet the working-class and small business class on their own turf, at community activities important to these people. Progressives don't even visit, so no other voice is ever heard in the 'red' communities, and as a result "the left understands not a thing about how this political and economic system has hammered the humanity of ordinary working people...letting them be worked cheap and farmed like a human crop for profit".
• As a consequence of this numbing existence, "it is [a huge myth] that small towns are thrown into deep mourning when one of their young is killed in Iraq...There is growing dissatisfaction with the war, but it is because we are not winning, not because of the dead."
• The mortgage and banking industries exploit workers' dreams of home ownership, supported by the corporatists who need continued growth and rising home prices to finance ever-increasing consumer spending, in the fragile house of cards which is now beginning to implode in the US. Gullible poor workers who buy mobile homes on rented property are essentially "buying large rapidly-depreciating vehicles and paying for space to park them", the absolute antithesis of real home ownership, and a recipe for bankruptcy. But as long as workers are taught that "they are not worthy of a traditional house or decent treatment in the labor market or a living wage", this is the best they can hope for and aspire to.
• Probably the most eye-opening chapter for me was the one where he explains Americans' zeal for gun ownership and fierce opposition to gun control (a view Joe himself shares). He provides credible data to support gun owners' claims that (at least in a country as violent as the US) the mere possession of a gun deters more crime than gun ownership precipits. Progressives should look at the facts and realize that their passion for gun control is alienating them, and the parties they support, from 70 million gun owners for whom the issue is a pivotal one at the ballot box.
• At the same time, Joe is concerned about the propensity of many Americans (which he later ascribes in part to their belligerent Scots-Irish heritage) to carry their enthusiasm for guns to a degree that makes them "devotees to lethality". He worries about its explosive potential: "What happens when this country hits Peak Oil demand and the electrical grid starts browning down and even little things become desperately difficult or unaffordable? What happens if the wrong kind of president declares the wrong kind of national emergency? What will be the first reflex of those hundreds of thousands of devotees to lethality?" Joe is concerned that this belligerence and passion for religious fundamentalism is behind the passion for wars in the Mid-East and Asia and even a passion for a nuclear war. He analyzes the low-level perpetrators of Abu Ghraib like Lynddie England and finds their behaviour completely consistent with the pent-up anger, ignorance and willingness to follow orders that those of Scots-Irish ancestry, or influenced by that culture, exhibit around the world and especially in workng-class US communities.
• Joe describes the leaders of the fundamentalist churches in the US as poorly educated breakaways from the lower ranks of other churches. Their lack of "fancy learnin'" is unrecognized by their equally uneducated followers. Fundamentalists now make up a quarter of the electorate, a segment that has recently and cynically been politicized by corporatists, and is overwhelmingly white, with a high-school education or less, and working-class. A growing minority of evangelicals are believers in replacing secular government and laws with Christian ones, and support what can only be called Holy Wars against non-Christian nations, to accelerate the prophecy of the second coming and the Reign of Christ. A majority believe in the Rapture, which means they could care less about the future of their nation or the environment.
• Unlike public schools, and unlike health care and other civic organizations, fundamentalist congregations are still functioning, growing and open to all. And Christian education and Christian home-schooling are filling the void of a crumbling public education system, and helping to develop the cadres of right-wing believers in the future. They have already achieved astonishing penetration of the upper echelons of the Bush administration and many political establishments and educational institutions and NGOs. The product of this brainwashing by uneducated religious leaders is an electorate "with eyes, that is to say the camera to shoot what is all around them, but no intellectual software to edit or make sense of it all.", victims of "an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis" that Joe predicts will outlast any brief respite in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
• Joe points out the astonishing popularity of the most grotesque "entertainments" -- videos circulating on and off the Internet showing the grisly deaths of both Americans and Iraqis in the Bush War -- the ultimate reality shows. The former are used to whip up fury, indignation and xenophobia, and the latter are a spectacle of religious eye-for-an-eye retribution, applauded by Mel Gibson-style viewers as vengeance in God's name. Joe is not surprised at this, or at the probability that many more Abu Ghraib type atrocities are occurring worldwide in US secret prisons, directed by the CIA and perpetrated by working class, uneducated, Scots-Irish troops many with streaks of religious zealotry. And he was not surprised at the monstrous animal cruelty at the Pilgrims Pride plant (workers reveling in stomping chickens to death), where Lynddie England used to work until she quit because management didn't care about the atrocities that went on there. You come from violent stock, and get put down violently all your life, you tend to perpetuate the pattern. Violence, in the streets, in the workplace, in entertainment, and in theatres of war, defines the working class life experience. The rest of us would just rather not see it or acknowledge it.
• There is a complicated and ironic explanation why huge not-for-profit (but very profitable) hospitals centralized in affluent communities are starving out smaller, local hospitals in poorer areas, to the point that health-care facilities in poorer communities are mostly now just places exhausted working class Americans are "discarded when they can no longer work". Joe explains the perverse way many of these institutions are forced to operate, often treating long-term patients for illnesses they don't have and worsening their condition. These facilities are now the largest cause of bankruptcies in the US, even though 2/3 of these bankrupts have health insurance (thanks to high premiums and deductibles and uncovered costs), and half of uninsured Americans owe money to health-care institutions.
• Joe presents some alarming data on the health care and social security crisis looming especially for older women in the US. Two thirds of Social Security recipients are women, and 90% of them receive no other income, putting most of them below the poverty line at a time the Bushies are trying to cut, bankrupt and/or abolish the system entirely. Half of Americans depend entirely on the government for help when they get old. "Social security is the most important ongoing domestic story in America", Joe asserts bluntly, explaining that it is destroying the social fabric of working class families as many face the dread of regularly visiting elder family members in horrific institutions, elders who paid much into the system and now plead desperately and hopelessly for escape from these terrible places, escape that never comes.

The bottom line of this vicious cycle is that half of Americans are functionally illiterate, and poor education, poor health care, poor nutrition, corporatist oppression and exploitation are creating a time bomb that, in the short run, vents itself in anger against pontificating liberals they never see and don't understand, and in the long run could explode into bloody and nationwide violence. These people, living right in our midst but whom we never reach out to, simply don't have the wherewithal to improve their own lot -- "they are too uneducated, too conditioned to the idea that being a consumer is the same thing as being a citizen."

Joe laments the fact that both affluent and poor are now being brought up with neither the capacity nor the need for self-recognition -- for discovering who they are as individuals. Instead, they are given a 'menu' of lifestyles to choose from, each with its own defining brand names and ensembles. "Adult yokels and urban sophisticates can choose from a preselected array of possible selves based solely on what they like to eat, see, wear, hear and drive." None of us can, any longer, "make up his or her identity from scratch." The upper-middle and affluent suburban "catering classes", those who support the corporatist centre (orange band in my chart above), are more to blame for its excesses than the working class because the catering classes at least have the education and power to see and resist it. When I published this chart a couple of years ago, it never occurred to me, in my liberal affluent comfort, that many or most of those living on the Edge are not at all able to see the centre for what it is, or to have any inkling that they need to pull further away from it, not aspire to become part of it.

We are all, Joe argues, prisoners of this corporatist political and economic system, caught, more or less, in its web. "America's much-ballyhood liberty is largely fictional. Three million of us are [in prisons or on parole]...The rest of us are captives of credit, our jobs, our need for health insurance, or our ceaseless quest for a decent retirement fund." What's worse, "You never know you are in prison until you try the door". And America's working class in particular has been so systematically dumbed down that they can't even see the door.

America, he says, cannot hope to stop messing up the rest of the world until it solves its own mess. "When social conscience extends no farther than ourselves, our friends, our families then Darfur and secret American prisons abroad are not [perceived to be] a problem".

This book is about the horrific mess that is America in the 21st century, but there is nothing here for those of us living in other countries to be smug about. American culture is being embraced everywhere in the world (and not, for the most part, forced down anyone's throats). And our cultures already exhibit many of the same qualities and propensities that are so magnified in the US and portrayed in such terrifying light by Joe Bageant.

So no matter where in the world you live, please buy several copies of Deer Hunting With Jesus and give them to people who do not understand why George Bush won the US election of 2004. This is important, and Joe has done all the hard work and research for us, in a courageous, personal and awesome portrait of the true nature of the most powerful country on the planet. We need everyone to hear this story, to understand what has been going on under our noses all along, that we never got quite close enough to see.

The Tyranny of Oil:

“The World’s Most Powerful Industry—What We Must Do to Stop It”

By Antonia Juhasz from HarperCollins Publishers

Antonia Juhasz is a leading oil industry, international trade, and finance policy expert and the author of The Bush Agenda. A fellow with Oil Change International and the Institute for Policy Studies, she has served as an aide to two members of Congress and holds a Master's Degree in public policy from Georgetown University. Juhasz is an award-winning writer and media commentator; her work has been featured in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Petroleum Review Magazine, and Alternet.org. She has appeared on Kudlow & Company, National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show and Marketplace, Washington Journal, Hannity & Colmes, and Democracy Now!, among many other shows. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Climate Deal

May Be Too Late To Save Coral Reefs, Scientists Warn

by David Adam

Published on Monday, October 27, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

A new global deal on climate change will come too late to save most of the world's coral reefs, according to a US study that suggests major ecological damage to the oceans is now inevitable.

Emissions of carbon dioxide are making seawater so acidic that reefs including the Great Barrier Reef off Australia could begin to break up within a few decades, research by the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California suggests. Even ambitious targets to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, as championed by Britain and Europe to stave off dangerous climate change, still place more than 90% of coral reefs in jeopardy.

Oceanographers Long Cao and Ken Caldeira looked at how carbon dioxide dissolves in the sea as human emissions increase. About a third of carbon pollution is soaked up in this way, where it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Experts say human activity over the last two centuries has produced enough acid to lower the average pH of global ocean surface waters by about 0.1 units.

Such acidification spells problems for coral reefs, which rely on calcium minerals called aragonite to build and maintain their exoskeletons.

"We can't say for sure that [the reefs] will disappear but ... the likelihood they will be able to persist is pretty small," said Caldeira.

The new study was prompted by questions by a US congressional committee on how possible carbon stabilisation targets would affect coral loss.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to more than 380ppm now. Campaigners and politicians in Europe and the UK say a new global climate deal, which is expected to be agreed next year, must aim to limit CO2 to 450ppm, though scientists say that is unlikely and the world is heading for 550ppm or even 650ppm.

The research suggests that stabilising world carbon levels at 450ppm would still dump so much carbon dioxide in the oceans that only 8% of coral reefs would be surrounded by water with enough aragonite to maintain their structure. Some 7% of the ocean below 60 degrees south will see a shortage of aragonite, while parts of the high latitude ocean could see a pH drop of 0.2 units.

At 550ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, no coral reef would have access to enough of the mineral. Even stabilising CO2 at current levels would still leave some 60% of coral bathed in seawater with low aragonite levels.

The increased amounts of carbon dioxide going into the ocean will also affect other marine life, such as shellfish, that need the calcium mineral to build carbonate shells.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say the risk posed by carbon pollution to coral and marine life could justify a carbon stabilisation goal "lower than what might be chosen based on climate considerations alone".

The UK's Royal Society is preparing to issue a warning to policymakers on the issue, together with dozens of other international science academies.

Caldeira said the affected reefs would not disappear straight away, but that the change in water chemistry would leave them vulnerable to attack, bleaching or disease.

He said: "We're losing the Arctic ice, it looks like we're going to lose the coral reefs and we could lose much of the rainforest. I find it disconcerting that these ecosystems that have been around on Earth for a long, long time are no longer able to survive."

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited

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